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Wearing your convictions on your arm

A couple of months ago, at the Melbourne Convention Centre, I gave a pretty powerful speech to 3,000 designers that included solid arguments on how making media accessible to everyone will be the next big thing in design — that universal design is today where green design was 10 years ago.

I mentioned how there are only two jurisdictions in the world that have legislation demanding accessible websites of not just the public sector, but of private organizations as well. These jurisdictions are Ontario and Australia.

A person with a connection to Arts Access Victoria, an organization with a public mandate to realize the artistic aspirations of people with disabilties, heard my speech. The next morning I had a voicemail on my Australian cell from Simone Flanagan, general manager of The Other Film Festival, run by the same organization, asking if I could extend my trip through Monday to meet some people from The Other Film Festival about making the OFF website accessible. OFF is short for The Other Film Festival: new cinema by, with and about people with disabilities.

A few calls to airlines and it was doable. Gaining such a passionate client was fun and would also selfishly give me two days to go explore Tasmania and the largest private are gallery in the world that is located there. (future blog).

How passionate is fully sighted Simone? Check out her tattoo in braille (yep, that’s lower case, according to the braille community).